Monday, February 1, 2016

Time for me to stop commenting about politics and other sensitive topics

I've been cautioned and advised by several good friends that I should take a chill pill on commenting about various political things. Some of the topics I've been quite vocal about are high profile things involving high power people .. and I might be beginning to get noticed by them, which of course is not a good thing!

I get frustrated by political actions that I find to be stupid and I don't hesitate to tell it straight the way I think about it. Obviously every such statement bothers someone else. Its one thing when its irrelevant noise, but if it gets noisy then I'm a troublemaker.

I'm not keen to get to that state.

Its not because I have anything to hide or protect - not in the least. Further I'm not scared off by the PM telling private sector people like me to "go home" or "be exposed" but publicly naming private individuals in parliament is rather over the top IMO. Last thing I want is to get there.

I have an immediate family and an extended family of 500+ in WSO2 that I'm responsible for. I'm taping up my big mouth for their sake.

Instead I will try to blog constructively & informatively whenever time permits.

Similarly I will try to keep my big mouth controlled about US politics too. Its really not my problem to worry about issues there!

I should really kill off my FB account. However I do enjoy getting info about friends and family life events and FB is great for that. So instead I'll stop following everyone except for close friends and family.

Its been fun and I like intense intellectual debate. However, maybe another day - just not now.

(P.S.: No, no one threatened me or forced me to do this. I just don't want to come close to that possibility!)

7 comments:

Sanjeeva the fact you can write this blog means you don't actually fear; it's a perception you wish to create among the public to say that your freedom to expression of speech is being threatened under this government.

Come on Sanjiva you can do a better blog than this. However let me tell you know body including any politician from any party should be able to stop anyone from expression of speech, except if racial hatred is promoted. This is what the people who voted for this government wanted to establish. You can be rest assured the current government has demonstrated till to date that people have the freedom to express their voice.

You don't have to change who you are; stand for justice; this government will support such ideology. If not I will be the first to stand and fight for freedom of speech.

This is what has happened to our country stupid people are boasting and professionals goes to or forced to silence mode. I agree with you about common issues but if there is any stupidity about your professional area ( do by the government) better to not to keep silence. For example we so your ideas against the agreement between India and Sir Lanka ( As it is badly impact for the IT industry). We think you are a bib big resource of our country.

Yes sanjeewa, anyone with 02 cents worth in their heads would understand what an indirect threat is when its made except for those who try to sugar coat the truth and act to look big in the deviants eyes. And anyone with 02 cents can figure those people out too. It took allot of guts to talk about it from the start like a true patriot. It hurt when the chairman of fitis, chinthaka said (at the CSSL panel discussion on ETCA at Sri Lanka Foundation, 02/2016) as a businessman you cant be a patriot always (loose tongue or ;) but you showed people like that otherwise. personally ill always be a patriot than a vile businessman since i believe you can be a good businessman + patriot.

Given your position and the potential of your extended family, you can help change our country for the better in other, more sustainable and less confrontational ways.

For example, instead of you yourself being vocal about the "stupid decisions that politicians take", you can drive the construction of, say, a platform where everyone can hold constructive debates and come up with strategies for solving political issues.

Imagine a quora like forum with stack overflow like maturity model for discussion on topics of national interest...

Imagine the key statements (facts in logical sense, which can be reasoned about) in each discussion being extracted (automatically by parsing the text and then refined by human intervention), and the contributors being able to vote "for/against/undecided" on each of those points...

Imagine different viewpoints being identified and the community reducing each viewpoint to its key statements... Imagine the emotional veil that clouds judgement melting away, revealing the true essence of the matter ...

Imagine associating media coverage for that topic at the topic->key point level, allowing the newscasters to be rated on their bias/independence! I personally think the biggest problem is not the politicians. It is the "impressionable masses without a proper appreciation of the political issues" who put them in power! This is the dark side of democracy. And unfortunately, media is the power that influences people as to what topics need their attention and what viewpoint they should have on each!

Instead, imagine newscasters referring to your platform when covering a controversial national topic like people now refer to Wikipedia...

Imagine news programs scrambling over each other to proclaim that they are the ones rated #1 on this and that metric in your platform, instead of saying empty phrases like "News first", " Truth first", or "Paththa Giyath Aeththa kiyana"...

This, is something you can do!(on WSO2 Middleware and tech, of course)